‘Well, try it for size,’ I said, ‘and if you find any cheese, save some for me.’ I parted the rear canvas. ‘Hop in.’
‘OK, I’ll play,’ said Cassidy. She hitched her skirt and swung a leg up. It looked good enough to eat and probably would have been if she’d spent eighty days in a lifeboat and had drawn the wrong straw. I helped her aboard as decently as I could. Private Peterson was a different kettle of fish. Having watched her sister soldier’s leg show with visible disgust, she was dead against being helped.
‘Get lost,’ she said and unwisely tried to hurl herself aboard at a reckless speed. She made a terrible mess of it. In the little van her legs suffered seconds of exposure before she was able to right herself. I closed the canvas on her yell of mortification. Poor girl. Insecurity, that’s what it was. There was a lot of it about among some girls, mostly due to the way roving GIs addressed the problem of being far from home.
Sergeant Masters sat next to me as I tanked my way back to the village. I asked her what she thought of life in the American Army. She said it was a temporary condition that couldn’t be helped and she was trying to learn to love it.
‘I don’t know if you’ll learn to love Suffolk,’ I said, ‘it’s pretty rural.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said, taking a keen interest in what she could see of it right now. She’d just been railroaded from Chelmsford she said, in a funny old toy train. She had a very self-confident air. I had a gloomy feeling she was faultlessly efficient. I wasn’t too keen on that kind of woman. I didn’t mind Aunt May’s motherly efficiency, it had been a blessing to me, but I had fixed ideas about women and top of the list was the conviction they were designed by nature to be kind, loving and a bit incompetent, except in a kitchen. Sergeant Masters said she hadn’t been long in the UK but liked what she’d seen of it so far. Entering the village, she saw a medley of thatched roofs and said they were really cute, part of old England.
‘They harbour livestock,’ I said, ‘but they’re pretty, I suppose.’
‘Pretty?’
‘All right, cute,’ I said and pulled up outside Jim’s cottage. He was at his gate, the petrol can wrapped in sacking under his arm and a cardboard box in his hand. Up to my window he came and handed in the cardboard box.
‘Six eggs,’ he said.
‘Ta, old love,’ I said, thinking of what they could do for my empty stomach. ‘Big ’uns, are they?’
‘Ain’t pullets’ marbles,’ said Jim. ‘’Ello, ’ello, who’s yer lady friend, lad?’ He gave Sergeant Masters an interested look. She had an attractive curve to her jacket. ‘Found a good ’un there, Tim, ’ave yer?’
‘American,’ I said, thinking of fried egg sandwiches if I could get some bread from our sergeant-cook.
‘Ain’t ’er fault,’ said Jim, ‘people can’t ’elp where they’re born.’
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Sergeant Masters, obviously foxed by cockney twang laced with a little Suffolk burr.
‘That you’re rare,’ I said.
‘Watch it, Hardy,’ she said.
‘She’s a sergeant,’ I said to Jim. I was no longer in a hurry.
‘That ain’t ’er fault, neither,’ said Jim, ‘it’s the gawd-help-us war that’s done it. Unnatural, though.’ Jim considered females were for cuddling, not soldiering. Nor saluting. ‘It’s the war done it all right, Tim. I’ll put the porridge tin back.’ He disappeared.
‘What’s a porridge tin?’ asked Sergeant Masters, who’d at least heard that correctly.
‘Oh, nothing very—’ A shriek interrupted me.
‘You dirty old ratbag, I’ll get you run in!’ It was Private Peterson. I’d carelessly overlooked her presence.
‘What’s with Cecily?’ asked Sergeant Masters and she climbed out. I followed. The village was quiet, the couple of shops shut for lunch and the Suffolk Punch pub was only a sleepy murmur. Jim’s hat was over one ear and there was a look of confusion on his face. Private Peterson was halfway out of the canvas curtains and swinging punches.
‘He groped me!’ she yelled.
‘Not old Jim,’ I said, ‘he goes to church at Christmas.’
‘He’s a randy old goat!’ Cecily was livid.
Jim tried to explain about replacing a porridge tin. Cecily wasn’t having any.
‘No harm done,’ I said.
‘He’s lousy with hormones,’ she yelled, ‘and so are you. One look at a girl in uniform and you’re all like Attila the Hun.’
Cassidy was laughing. Sergeant Masters was frowning at Cecily.
‘I ain’t partial to them kind of goings-on,’ protested Jim. He was very attached to his missus, she being comely. He was also attached to his chickens, his smallholding and his fiddles. ‘See yer, Tim,’ he said, and escaped.
‘I’ll report that kook,’ said Cecily.
‘Don’t be like that, lovey,’ I said, thinking the porridge might get a mention. ‘We’re all mates together, you and us. I know there’s Hitler, and your generals and our generals, but the rest of us ought to be bosom chums, or what’ve we got that’s worth dying for?’
‘Am I hearing things?’ asked Sergeant Masters.
‘Bosom chums?’ said Cassidy, a kind of glee in her eyes.
‘He’s at it again,’ cried the upset Cecily. ‘Isn’t there any guy who can think of candy and blueberry pie instead of how a girl is put together?’
‘Wrap it up, Cecily,’ said Sergeant Masters.
‘Being molested, that’s got to be wrapped up?’ asked Cecily, who was better-looking than she deserved to be.
‘I don’t believe it was meant,’ said Sergeant Masters.
‘He looked a cute old guy to me,’ said Cassidy.
I took a peek inside the van. The petrol can was there, the sacking having fallen away. Couldn’t be helped.
When we were on our way again, Sergeant Masters said, ‘It’s none of my business, of course, but I thought porridge over here came in cartons.’
‘It’s the war,’ I said, ‘we’re short of cartons.’
‘I think I’ve got you,’ she said.
‘Where now?’ she asked when we reached BHQ. I indicated the orderly room. All three of them marched smartly into the mansion, leaving me lumbered with their kit. So I dumped the valises in the hall outside the orderly room in the kind of untidy heap that would make Battery Sergeant-Major Baldwin think about court-martial charges. In the orderly room, only Bombardier Wilkins was on duty. He had a well-fed portly look. He’d eaten, of course. I was growling with want. Having seen what the three Wacs looked like, Wilkins suggested I could keep an eye on the orderly room while he showed them to the ATS quarters and where to catch some eats.
‘I’ll show ’em,’ I said, ‘I’ll fall in half if I don’t catch some eats of my own.’
‘Excuses, excuses,’ said Bombardier Wilkins. ‘OK,’ he said to the Wacs, ‘Gunner Hardy will take you, but you’ll have to report back here afterwards.’
‘Will do,’ said Sergeant Masters crisply, ‘I believe I’m to meet up with a Top Sergeant Dawson.’
‘You don’t need him,’ said Wilkins, ‘you’ve met me.’
‘We’re touched,’ said Sergeant Masters, ‘but I’ve got orders.’
Wilkins was on a hiding to nothing, anyway. Top Sergeant Dawson, six feet of Kansas beef, wasn’t likely to let a ravishing Wac sergeant be sucked into turmoil by a short, lumpy British bombardier.
I took the three of them round to the Nissen hut quarters of the ATS.
‘Where do we get the eats?’ asked Cassidy.
‘Go through that door straight ahead,’ I said, ‘and ask for Mavis. If no-one answers or nothing happens, pop over to our cookhouse and I’ll fry you an egg each on a slice of toast.’
Sergeant Masters, surveying things, asked, ‘Is it kind of primitive here?’
‘I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t. Cold water ablutions, PT at six in the morning, including winter, and no candy. I hope you’ve all brought woolly knicks.’
&n
bsp; ‘Woolly what?’ asked Cassidy.
‘Don’t ask for details,’ said Cecily, ‘he’s a nutter. Hey, hold it, what’s happened to our bags?’
‘Oh, they’ll be walking about somewhere,’ I said and left at the double.
In the cookhouse, which was out of bounds, I asked the sergeant-cook if there was any dinner left. ‘A bone’ll do, sarge, as long as there’s some gravy with it.’
‘Listen, d’you know what the time is?’
‘Yes, dinnertime. All over the country.’
‘Not here, you dozy tentpole,’ he said. ‘Here you nosh at twelve-thirty. So there’s nothing left. What there was went gluey. I don’t allow gluey leftovers to idle around in my kitchen. Nor you. Pee off.’
The leftovers had obviously been fed to the OCs ravenous Dalmatian. So I gave the sergeant a fresh egg all to himself and he let me make some fried egg sandwiches with the rest. The yolks were golden. I’d have to thank Jim’s missus next time I saw her.
CHAPTER FOUR
A LITTLE BROWN-PAPER packet arrived from Aunt May, containing knitted grey socks and a letter. She was always doing things like that, sending me soldiers’ comforts. In her letter she recounted local happenings that had taken place since my return to BHQ. The vicar, she said, had preached a sermon of rebuke last Sunday. It was aimed at people who thought the war gave them an excuse to be irresponsible, uncaring and even faithless. Aunt May thought the sermon came about because everyone knew Edie Hawkins was going to have a baby. It was uncomfortable news because Edie’s husband was in the Middle East and had been for nearly two years. Aunt May sounded sad about it, she didn’t like that sort of thing. Moreover, Edie’s mother had told her that it was all because Edie had lost her head on Wimbledon Common one night last September with a married Canadian soldier. Then there was Alf Cook. He was going to be charged with assault and battery outside a pub. Aunt May said Mr Cook was a terrible headache to poor Mrs Cook, which was such a pity because he’d been heroic during the Blitz.
I replied, thanking Aunt May for the welcome socks and telling her I was sorry to learn about Edie Hawkins and her embarrassing predicament. Edie would have been better off, I said, if she’d stuck to playing tennis on Wimbledon Common. There was a lot of the other stuff about, I said, and not only on Wimbledon Common. I also told Aunt May I’d met a very good-looking American sergeant. I had to add a ‘PS’ after I’d finished the letter. Lady sergeant, I wrote.
I didn’t want lovely old Aunt May to think I’d gone peculiar.
BHQ gave Sergeant Kit Masters and her two assistants an office on the first floor of the mansion. There, in the best traditions of American efficiency, documents were typed in quadruplicate and filed. In the orderly room, our ATS corporals never got beyond triplicate and the filing system was guesswork, due to Corporal Deborah Watts being in charge of it. Not having joined the Army to do filing, Deborah simply took no interest in it.
‘I’m not a square peg in a round hole yet,’ she said.
‘Other way about, I’d say,’ said Gunner Frisby.
‘Mind your eye,’ said Deborah.
‘Only mentioning the obvious,’ said Frisby.
‘Watch it,’ said Deborah.
‘I am,’ said Frisby.
There were mounds of reports daily for the American girls, emanating from the two American officers who came and went like anonymous shadows, in company with their driver, Top Sergeant Dawson. But nothing was secret in rural Suffolk and everyone knew they mixed military business with social pleasures. However, they did come up with a profusion of reports which Sergeant Masters said, were written in illiterate Egyptian. But orders were orders, even in the American Army and so it was all translated into English by the Wacs, then typed and filed.
In keeping with a War Office belief that female Allied service personnel needed protection from male British soldiery, Sergeant Masters and her assistants were declared out of bounds to other ranks as far as their office was concerned. However, off-duty hours were another matter. Even the War Office hadn’t yet thought of a way to cage other ranks off duty. Several BHQ gunners were very taken with Cassidy, the friendly blonde. Gunner Dunwoodie thought her sheer magic. But he lacked self-confidence. He was also fairly brainless. It all came to nothing, however, for Top Sergeant Dawson put in a claim that made Cassidy exclusive to him.
The news grieved Dunwoodie. ‘Done it on me,’ he said.
Everyone said jolly hard luck, mate.
I occasionally saw Sergeant Masters in passing. She would smile and wave, then pass briskly on. She tidied up as she went. She would correct the position of a fire extinguisher standing in the tiled hall of the mansion, adjust a displaced whitewashed lump of the stone that bordered the paths of the complex around the Nissen huts, or pick up a piece of paper that had managed to escape the eye of the sergeant-major. She would hand the scrap to the first gunner she met and say crisply, ‘I guess that’s yours, soldier.’ She did it to me one day when we came face to face outside the ration stores.
‘I guess that’s yours, Tim old boy, old boy.’
I studied the scrap. It was kind of nondescript. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said and handed it back.
‘Wrong move,’ she said and stuffed it up my battledress blouse. ‘Listen, you’re not the friendliest guy in the world, are you? You keep passing me by.’
‘I thought that was you, I thought you were a born passer-by. I like a bit of stopping and talking meself. I suppose it’s more difficult for sergeants, they’ve got a responsibility to be efficient, they can’t stand about waiting for someone to come up and chat.’
‘That’s talking?’ said Kit. ‘All that eyewash? You’ve got room for improvement, old buddy. I’ll do what I can to help. Let’s see, where do you go during the evenings in this wildly exciting place?’
‘Village pub, mostly.’
‘You’re an alcoholic?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Is it recommended?’
‘Too much drink?’
‘No, you muttonhead, the village pub.’
‘Well, I like it,’ I said. She brushed an eyebrow with the tip of her finger. She had a clean look. She smelled clean. And she was very American with her wide mouth and white teeth. ‘It’s cosy and fuggy.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Fuggy.’
‘Is that a word?’ she asked.
‘Yes, adjective of fug,’ I said, showing off my secondary school education. ‘Fug’s smoky fog.’
‘Is this a conversation?’
‘Just talk.’
‘It’s beating my brains out,’ said Kit. ‘All the same, see you in the pub one evening, then?’
‘Can’t wait, lovey.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Kit again.
‘Pardon?’
‘What’s with lovey?’
‘Me,’ I said, ‘you get me as well as the fug.’
‘I think I need time to work that one out,’ said Kit.
‘Help yourself. By the way, are you a bit incompetent at some things?’
‘Is that a question?’ she asked.
‘Just thought I’d ask.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I want you to know it wouldn’t worry me if you were.’
‘I might have been incompetent at fixing some things when I was five,’ she said, ‘but that’s all ironed out now.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
‘Come again?’
‘Hope the weather holds,’ I said. ‘See you in the pub one evening, then.’
‘Don’t break your back,’ said Kit.
It was quiet on the whole. At least, it was in the UK. It wasn’t in the Pacific or Russia, or Burma or Tunisia. And it might not have been on Wimbledon Common, either, now that the weather had turned warm. BHQ was very quiet, much to the liking of everyone except Major Moffat, our battery commander. He preferred happenings. Accordingly, when he was alerted to the possible misappropriation of WD petrol, he was only too happy to conduct an enquiry,
even though he must have known it might result in two unwelcome findings. One, the misappropriation could have taken place under his nose. Two, someone in his battery could turn out to be a fiddling shower.
The first I heard about it was a week after I’d brought Sergeant Masters and her two girls to BHQ. The information arrived with Jim Beavers’ daughter, the precocious Minnie. As I came off duty one afternoon, Frisby advised me she was waiting to talk to me. She was loitering outside the open double gates in the high brick wall fronting the forecourt of the mansion. In her straw boater and gymslip she looked like a peachy-faced angel, but I knew the holy terror was lurking.
‘Dad sent me,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘To tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Not ’ere,’ said Minnie, ‘someone might be listening.’
‘And looking as well,’ I said, quite sure that across the road the workshop personnel were interesting themselves in what I was doing to a village schoolgirl.
Minnie got moving and I moved with her. She had a lively walk, typical of a healthy country girl. She was a south London cockney who’d turned herself into a country girl with no trouble at all. Bursting with health, Minnie was.
‘Well, let’s hear it, then,’ I said, ‘but if it’s anything saucy I’ll wallop you.’
She gurgled. ‘Ain’t you comical, Tim? You make a girl laugh, you do.’ She stopped, and from under her boater her blue eyes cast their cheekiness.
‘Come on, why did your dad send you?’
‘He said someone’s been round.’
‘Who, your Aunt Flossie?’ That was her mother’s aunt.
‘Course not Aunt Flossie. Oh, you Tim,’ she said and another gurgle escaped from her Cupid’s bow. ‘I’m praying, I am.’
‘Praying?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m praying I’m goin’ to be your best girl soon as I’m sixteen.’
‘Well, I’m praying that when you’re sixteen you’ll disappear in a puff of smoke,’ I said. ‘Now, come on, who’s been round to see your dad?’
‘Some soldiers, he said. From your lot. Dad said better he didn’t come and tell you himself, better he kept away. You go, Min, he said, it’ll only look as if you an’ Tim is courtin’.’
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